"When We’re in Bed and You Take Out Your Mouth Guard, I Know It’s On" by Melissa Crowe

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend Support Poem-a-Day January 21, 2020   When We're in Bed and You Take Out Your Mouth Guard, I Know It's On   Melissa Crowe

Like when, seventeen, I'd slide into your Beetle and you'd head out of town, summer daylight, and parked among the furrows of some field, you'd reach for the wool blanket. I knew you'd maneuver then into the cramped quarters between passenger seat and glove box, blanket over your head and my lap, where you'd sweat and sweat until I cried out. Or further back, first winter of our courtship, nearing curfew, when we'd "watched" Predator again from the Braden's lovers' row, you'd slow to a halt at the last stop sign before my house. I knew we'd linger there, under the streetlamp's acid     glow, and you'd ask if I had to go home. Yes, I'd say, I better, soon—but I knew you wouldn't hit the gas, not for the longest time, three minutes, five, and snow falling and the silent streets carless, I'd lift my top, you'd unzip my jeans and treat the expanse of soft skin between    shirt hem and underwear like sex itself, your worshipful mouth, my whole     body lit from within and without. Or even further back, how I knew by the first electric touch of our fingers in that dark theater, like a secret                         handshake— I know you, I need you, like an exchange of life force between two aliens from planets never before joined across the cold, airless terror of space, that it was on, that it was on and on and on, forever.            Copyright © 2020 by Melissa Crowe. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 21, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets. About this Poem   "I'm a little chagrined to admit this poem began as a joke, and I'm a bit embarrassed, too, to reveal that the joke occurred to me in bed. In the end, what started out seeming silly wound up as a kind of archeology, me digging further and further into the past to discover the ways my beloved and I have signaled our intention to love—and, okay, thrill—each other for a lifetime." —Melissa Crowe   Melissa Crowe is the author of Dear Terror, Dear Splendor (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). She's the editor of Beloit Poetry Journal and coordinator of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, where she teaches courses in poetry and publishing. Poetry by Crowe   Dear Terror, Dear Splendor (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) "I Loved You Before I Was Born" by Li-Young Lee "This Sugar" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil "Brief Interval" by Cheryl Clarke January Guest Editor: Meg Day   Thanks to Meg Day, author of Last Psalm at Sea Level (Barrow Street, 2014), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A about Day's curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year. A culture break, a source of daily renewal...   If reading Poem-a-Day has become a meaningful part of your day, please consider supporting this free series with a donation. Your gift makes publishing Poem-a-Day possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit poets.org   Unsubscribe here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038